IC Voicemail, Driftfleet:

[tothefly]

[There is no recording, just a few clicks and a beep.]

[Leave any IC voice messages or texts for Natasha here.]

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​​​​[ Predator does not flinch from predator. He stares her down, unmoving. He usually goes to Steve for this quality, because Steve stands back straight and eyes forward and won't let the world move him for anything. This stillness is a new edge, walks on him so smoothly the transition is barely perceptible, and it belongs to only Bucky. (In another world, it belongs to the Winter Soldier.) ]

​​​​[ When he answers, his voice is low, no less icy. ]

No one knows you're not her better than me.

​​​​[ Usually he doesn't hide his emotions from her, but the grief of admitting that, he stifles, lets it collapse under the grip of his anger. ]

Your world isn't​​​​ my responsibility. Fine. I can accept that. But you dare stand there and tell me that I owe nothing to any Steve Rogers or any Natasha Romanoff — that I'm not allowed to do what I can for you, no matter how damn clumsy it could be, and ​​​​[ he leans in, eyes burning ] I will tell you you are lying.

​​​​[ These are his knives, clashing and scraping against hers. ]

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[tothefly]

[It's a battle of wills, and neither of them are breaking. Words thrown to wound, to drive the other person away. It's quick, and it's dirty, and for someone who doesn't know her at all he seems to know exactly what to say. It hits. It wounds.

It only makes her angrier. Chinks in her armor, tiny ones, but visible, and she knows it. Plans for it.]

Right. You just act like you know me, like she and I are the same on some fundamental level. Maybe that's true.

Does that mean I should start treating you like you're him? After all, we're all the same on the inside.

[She doesn't back down from him, head tilted upwards to look him in the eye. She might be a considerable amount shorter than him, but she's had decades of practice looking up into someone's eyes and not looking weaker for it. There's a heat in them that matches his own, sparks she can't hide. Frustration, fury, helplessness. She hates all of this.]

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​​​​[ With the same ice, ]

You're both the Black Widow.

​​​​[ It's wired into her code, infused into each and every base component. Ruthlessness. Efficiency. It's in him too, enfolding him like an old uniform. He tried to deny what he was becoming in the War, but the soldier won, and the soldier sits with the rest of him in his heart. ]

And maybe we are both the Winter Soldier. The only thing stopping you from treating the two of us the same is you.

I'm sorry that he hurt you. But that's all I can be held responsible for — I'm not going to apologise for existing, or for knowing Nat. You want to be angry at me for that? Go ahead. Don't expect me to stand there and take it. I'm not that man anymore.

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[tothefly]

[And they're both Soldiers. She sees that, now, in the line of his shoulders, the calm, the control. He's not dead inside, or sleeping, not like the Soldier she knows, but he's the same in ways you can't change. And maybe that's true for her, too, maybe you can't be born Natasha Romanoff and not have some things stay the same, but she has made her choices, these choices, and no one else is getting the credit or the blame for them. She's been a lot of people. Now, she is who she chooses to be, and that woman is no one but her. She huffs, a sound that isn't laughter, nodding upwards at him.]

Black Widow's a lot of people, James. She let you see who she is. Do you know how many times I've done that? A little vulnerability goes a long way. I've gotten confessions from gods. What's another soldier?

[How well does he know the other woman? And if he knows her so damn well, why is he even here saying any of this? Why does he insist on saying she's different, except for when it's convenient for her to not be? Why is he here, trying to protect her? She isn't his to protect. She takes care of herself. Period. No one else can be trusted to do the job, not here. Maybe not even at home, anymore.]

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​​​​[ He'd told her she could have any name of his but that one, and it's been loaded into the next Widow's Bite and she expects it to hurt. It's a tactic so old it makes him huff a laugh. He sees now, it's not the same monster that lives in them both but — cousins, maybe. Cut from the same war story, except everyone forgets: war stories aren't about how winter comes and chips away at innocence. They are about something far more terrifying: love. Why else would people walk to hell, through mud and rain and blood, risk life and limb for no better cause than the one beside them? ]

​​​​[ Measured, ]

I know what's real. Don't deny her the right to choose her friends.

​​​​[ He lifts his left hand — knows she's wary of it — presses the index finger lightly to her lips. (She's fast, but at this range, he's faster). Quieter, ]

That name's not yours. Don't use it again.

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[tothefly]

I don't even know you.

[The admission is different, this time. Not just a you don't know me, but an admission of her own lack of knowledge. She doesn't know the first thing about him. She doesn't know that she wants to. It'll just make all this harder. After all, love is for children. She'd told that to the wannabe god as he sat in his cell, looking at her with disdain. It's a sentiment she stands by. Of course, somewhere inside her there's the ghost of a child with dreams of its own, but...the woman she is knows better. You do what you have to, because you have to, and because you're the only one who can. Because you're strong enough to carry the weight of it. Because no one else deserves this, and no one else could bear it.

She isn't a soldier. This isn't a battlefield. The fleet isn't a grand arena, good versus evil, right versus wrong. This is life, and it's nothing but grays, and the only thing that's certain is how little either of them know.]

[He lifts that finger to her lips, and she doesn't flinch--almost hopes he hits her, it'll give her a chance to use this energy--doesn't blink, looking up at him, at that laugh, at the expression on his face that says he thinks he knows what he's doing. When she speaks, her lips brush cold steel in what's almost a whisper.]

I'm not yours.

Don't touch me again.

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​​​​[ He drops his hand and takes a measured step back, not breaking her gaze. Once upon a time he'd have backed down from a small blond madman because that's what friends do, they swallow their pride and frustration at you and your damn fool ideas and they try their best to stand by you. This is not the same. This is monster to monster, teeth strip-cleaned and bared, circling. No exposed bellies or throats — both are too old and practiced. He thinks Steve would hurt to see him like this, or Steve would say it's complicated, and they're not their worst thoughts. All he has is the missing limb of a missing friend, where once something lived but is now transmuted and fused haphazardly to what else exists of James Barnes. ]

We're not so different.

​​​​[ He remembers saying, if he laid his cards on the table... but that man doesn't fit. He almost leaves it ambiguous as to whether he means him and her or him and the other Bucky, but, ]

Me and him.

​​​​[ If it's what she needs him to be. ]

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[tothefly]

[It is complicated. It's all gotten too complicated, even for her. Too many strings to keep her fingers on, too many eyes always watching. Too many hands, and too many of them made of cold, cold metal. She's formed a place that's hers, a persona she can stand, and every time she thinks she's settled there's something, someone else to throw her off-balance.]

[His hand is gone, and him with it, and she can feel the air flooding in to fill the space left behind. It was more than a step. It was a line being crossed, an offer revoked. He'll be what she needs him to be.

It's the last thing she needs.

Natasha steps forward towards him again, and past him, her shoulder brushing that left arm he thinks she's afraid of. Cautious, but not afraid. Not of him, not ever, regardless of how unknown. Circling her desk, she sits. Waits. For him to decide whatever it is he's decided, and to leave her with the aching pain in her arm and the aching in her head and a distinct sensation of something like loss in her chest. Homesickness, for a place where at least things made sense and she could run.]

I don't know him, either. But neither does he. Go make him your new project, if that's what you're looking for. I don't need your help.

[She doesn't need anyone. She'd almost forgotten that.]

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​​​​[ A better man would give her her space, and leave. A better man wouldn't think that of course she's wearing her bravado and her fearlessness as her shield and armour, because a woman so ruthless that the Black Widow becomes synonymous with her own name — that kind of woman needs that. She has it all on the ropes, doesn't she? And yet, he hurts for her. She's so used to being a monster. ]

No, you don't need me to help you or shield you.

​​​​[ His palms are flat on the table, and he sits across from her, still, and composed. Hands free of weapons, but all snipers wait for the shot. She knows this truth at least: he's no shield. ]

I'm not trying to save your soul. I'm trying to say I care about you. I don't want you to hurt. You, not because you have her name and her face, or I can't separate them. I can. If you think I can't, I'll do a better job of it.

​​​​[ Soft, ]

We're not at war with each other.

​​​​[ His eyes drop to his hands, and the stoic mask cracks. She said this to him trying to convince him to join the fight against the Chitauri, when he'd rather have watched the whole world burn. We are not at war. Yet it's all he knows; it's infused with the serum in his cells. The War always needs a supersoldier, and it never ends, it just changes hands. ]

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[tothefly]

[A better man. She's only known one better man, and he pushed just like this one does. There's a lot of Steve in what he does, and that really just makes it worse. The fact that he's so unaware of it. The fact that there's more of him that's the Soldier, and still more she just doesn't know. She'd thought she was beginning to. It was almost comfortable. Or was that all just the thing in her head, screwing with her? She couldn't tell. Didn't want to know the answer, really. Not now.

So she looks at him, across the desk, looks at him while he says those things with those sad, heartfelt blue eyes, looks at him while that mask falls apart and she almost hates him a little for that, too. For reminding her that he's still a man, and that somewhere in the wreckage of the Soldier there might still be one, too.]

We aren't?

[Her voice is soft, and there's almost a laugh to it. A laugh that's no laugh at all. God, the irony.]

There's always a war on somewhere. You just can't always see it.

[The cast rests on her desk, a reminder of the evening's events. The conversation with the Soldier, the fight at the bar. A break in her ulna, near the wrist. Near the previous breaks. Her fingers ache with memory as much as current pain. She's survived wars, before. If this isn't one, why does she feel so much like she might not survive it?]

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​​​​[ The laugh stings. He's not looking at her when she speaks. It's no fear of her claws, or unwillingness to meet her will with his, but it costs, to be the tireless cold thing he has living with him. They're not easily separable, and he thinks the divide might've crumbled when he was frozen in the Arctic. Sometimes, though, that winter soldier cracks and splinters away, and something of James Barnes walks out. That man still has a sliver of light left with him; Cole said it was locked away where nothing could touch it. That man can't look at her now. ]

We are more than that.

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[tothefly]

[She can't look at him anymore, either. She doesn't have the energy to keep being this angry, this bitter, and she doesn't want to see any part of him it isn't easy to be mad at. Her jaw hurts from the bruise she can feel blooming there; the two new stitches in her thigh to replace the ones she'd ripped in the brawl feel tight and raw. She feels raw, exposed, and unprepared. For this, for the Soldier, for everything.]

[Her voice, when she answers, sounds old. Tired. Exhausted. It shows in her shoulders, the set of her lips as she looks at his hands.]

What are we?

[What could they possibly be? She can't trust the Soldier to be anything like him. She can't trust him to not be the Soldier. Apparently, she can't even trust herself, and her hand lifts to her augment, rubbing the flesh around it trying not to dig her nails in and yank.]

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​​​​[ He hears Nat, in that voice, when one of her capture-and-pretend-to-be-interrogated schemes went sour, and he closes his eyes. He can't overlay the two of them simply, nor decouple them in slow motion. But she deserves better — this Natasha, any Natasha. ]

​​​​[ Hoarsely, ] Trying.

​​​​[ That's all he can give her, or anyone, from the wreckage. The willingness to try, stand, and walk on. Not without you. ]

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[tothefly]

[Trying. Is that what this is? Seems pretty complicated for trying. Trying to what, she could ask, trying for what, it's an answer like one of hers. The kind of answer that's no answer at all and still one hundred percent true.]

[For once, she doesn't ask. She doesn't think he knows the answer to the question, doesn't think she could stand to hear it regardless. Not until she pieces herself back together. There's a long moment of silence before she responds, and the answer may not seem related at all.]

This wasn't him. I was down on the planet. Got into a fight. Got careless. That's all.

[It's as much of an olive branch as she can stand to offer. Trying.]

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​​​​[ A jump from one line of the web to another. He knows a thing or two about spiders now. ]

Sorry.

​​​​[ Sorry she was alone when it happened. Sorry he meant to hurt her and did. Sorry he's not the kind of man who draws clear lines instead of living in the greys. ]

Nat said the Winter Soldier was fast, and strong. Spoke Russian, used Soviet rifling, untraceable rounds. That's all we know. Nobody's ever found him. I don't know anything about Project Insight — so this is either coming for me, or it's not going to happen at all.

​​​​[ He exhales, slowly. ]

Do you know how to break the programming?

​​​​[ This is desperation talking. It doesn't matter that he'd rather consign himself to disappearing, but he's rarely been able to ignore another person's wounds — and once upon a time he didn't mind standing by someone society said was not worth saving. He wants to be that man again, and this is how it will happen. ]

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[tothefly]

[She shakes her head, and it first it isn't clear what exactly the response is for. The apology he doesn't owe her, most likely; she used words as weapons, too, to the same effect. She couldn't be anything but what she was, at heart.

[It could be for the Soldier, but that info is true enough in her world, too. It could be for the last question, but that would be a lie. She knows what it took, even if she never heard it in exact words. It took something they don't have.]

The perfect soldier. Russian science, Russian training, Russian conditioning. New recruits were taught to emulate him. Try and be him. But he was always better.

What do you know about HYDRA?

[The question may seem abrupt, but she has a purpose in this, at least. Maybe she can find a way to deal with this. Use this man as a way through that one. It's the only way she can let herself think about this conversation.]

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​​​​[ The perfect soldier. His worst nightmare. He swallows, listens. ]

Cut off one head, two more take its place.

​​​​[ Said with utter distaste. An exhale. ]

We fought them in the War. They died with Schmidt.

​​​​[ Though he's much less certain of that second statement now. ]

SHIELD brought Zola over — Lord knows why. I gave Carter hell for that one. That's all I know.

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[tothefly]

[There's still a part of her that balks at giving more information than she absolutely has to. Information is currency, and she's always been thrifty. But one has to pay to play, and even if this is a ruse by someone in her world, even if she is imagining all this, being monitored, it's not like this isn't all already public knowledge by this point. She'd made sure of that.

It didn't have anything to do with not wanting to hurt him more. Best to just say it. Let him find his own thoughts.]

HYDRA infected SHIELD. From the very beginning. It grew with them, inside them. It started with Zola. It ended with Project Insight. Instantaneous targeting and elimination of any threat worldwide, regardless of size. World's largest eugenics project, all under HYDRA's control.

[She'd never met Agent Carter, but she knew Steve found some small comfort in her not being able to see her life's work fall.]

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​​​​[ His first thoughts are for Nat, and Peggy. Both who'd given so much to SHIELD. (All right — not entirely true, his first thought is Oh, God.) Everything they fought for: it'll crumble to ash. It'll hit him later, when he's alone and he has time to be properly horrified, to choke on the tang of what's been done to the Winter Soldier, from the very beginning. For now, he soldiers on. ]

How do I stop this?

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[tothefly]

[She can tell what the news does, mostly; can guess where his thoughts are going. Maybe your world's different, part of her wants to say, but it doesn't seem to be different in any way that makes it better.]

[So she focuses instead on his question. On the futility of it, the idealism, the single pronoun. Shrugs, slightly, with her right shoulder, careful not to move her injured arm.]

We already did, back home. But the Soldier doesn't know that. He's from before. Just before the final op.

You've talked to him.

[It's a statement, not a question, but her need for information is evident, too anyone who knows a Romanoff of any flavor.]

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​​​​[ There is only one kind of inevitability he accepts, and that's the possibility of death. Not failure. Failure is unacceptable. It's a quality he shares with his counterpart — although where HYDRA punishes the other Bucky this one is more than capable of carrying out the sentence himself. He drove a plane right into the water, and when he woke up, lived in an empty house, haunting it, for well over a year. ]

​​​​[ He responds to her veiled request as though it weren't so veiled, deciding not to push on the fact that she hasn't told him what to do about this Insight thing. ]

Yes. I intend to convince him to accept me as a handler until he can think for himself.

​​​​[ He scrubs his hand down his face. ]

After they woke me up, I was lost without orders. I broke everything I touched. I won't put him through that. [ soft, ] And we can't let him carry out this mission. We have to convince him it's wrong.

​​​​[ He'd said his target was Captain America, not Steve specifically. Well there's one Captain America here. He keeps the card up his sleeve. Natasha doesn't need to know this. ]

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[tothefly]

[If he wants to hear about Insight, she'll tell him about Insight. Not that it'll do him much good. From what she's heard, they probably won't remember anything when they head home, anyway. If they ever get home. But it's a conversation that costs her nothing to have.]

[Right now, the Soldier is the more immediate issue. He's going to play handler for another universe's version of himself? She suppose it's worth a shot. If they really are so much like their counterparts, who better to find out if there's anything remaining of the man he used to be? Who better to keep him in check? Aside from the obvious.]

You could always try concussing him.

[It's only half one of those dry, unfunny jokes she so often makes. Half of it's serious. It worked for Clint, when he was brainwashed. There's a pause, and a follow-up statement, something a touch more restrained in her voice. Something that's almost wistful, if a woman like her ever did wistful.]

Last time, it took Steve.

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​​​​[ It's a survival mechanism. If he's not the man for the job he'll simply make himself into one. Work longer shifts. Pull more weight. Punch harder. The most efficient route he can see is making a structure for the Winter Soldier and giving him definition until he understands what it is and can do it for himself. Everything Sam Wilson gave him, he intends to pay forward. ]

​​​​[ But dismay clouds his expression when she mentions Steve, and the loss melds in with it turning the colour grey and desolate. The one person he can't ever be like, only mimic, and not successfully or for long. ]

I'll try.

​​​​[ I owe him that. ]

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[tothefly]

[It's a behavior she recognizes, if only because it's something the three of them share. And that sorrow she sees roll across his face she recognizes because it mirrors something of her own. She'd grown to count on Steve, the last few years. To keep being immutable, unchangeable. He was the standard, the rock, the milestone, and not because she put him on a pedestal. He was just a man, but very possibly the only Good Man she'd ever known.]

Don't try to be him.

[You can't be, the words imply, but also you shouldn't. The Soldier doesn't need that, not here from a man that wasn't Steve. For once, he could use something resembling honesty.

If he didn't come after her, first.]

I won't make promises about the future.

[Slightly abrupt, but he knows what she's saying, and why. If it becomes necessary. Black Widow has always been good at doing what's necessary.]

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I thought you might say that.

​​​​[ Whether he means her first statement or the second, he leaves that ambiguous. Nat said it often, he didn't owe Steve carrying on with Captain America. He didn't have to fight anymore if he didn't want to — but war was all he knew. His fingers curl inwards, slightly, and he looks at her, wearily. ]

Do what you must. ​​​​[ soft, ] Death is sometimes a kindness.